Coordinated strategy key to Obama victory on Iran nuclear deal

Secretary of State John Kerry delivers a speech in support of the Iran nuclear deal Wednesday at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. MATT SLOCUM, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

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In this July 29 file photo, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California. speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington. Under Pelosi's direction, House Democrats orchestrated a daily rollout of endorsements of the Iran deal from a Capitol war room, tucked into Pelosi's office just off the House chamber. SUSAN WALSH, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

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Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., the longest-serving woman in the history of Congress, speaks during a news conference in March in Baltimore. Senate Democrats have rallied the 34 votes they need to keep the Iran nuclear deal alive in Congress, handing President Barack Obama a major foreign policy victory. Mikulski became the crucial 34th vote Wednesday morning, declaring the agreement is the best way to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions. FILE PHOTO, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

California representatives

Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer joined most of their fellow Democrats in supporting the Iran nuclear agreement.

 "This is a strong agreement that meets our national security needs and I believe will stand the test of time," Feinstein said in a July 14 statement released after the deal was reached.

 "This agreement is the only way to ensure that Iran's nuclear program is used exclusively for civilian purposes, which is in the best interest of the United States, Israel and the world," Boxer, a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in an Aug. 4 statement.

WASHINGTON – Just before the Senate left town for its August break, a dozen or so undecided Democrats met in the Capitol with senior diplomats from Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia who delivered a blunt, joint message: Their nuclear agreement with Iran was the best they could expect. The five world powers had no intention of returning to the negotiating table.

“They basically said unanimously this is as good a deal as you could get and we are moving ahead with it,” recalled Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., who lent crucial support to the deal this week despite some reservations. “They were clear and strong that we will not join you in re-imposing sanctions.”

For many if not most Democrats, it was that message that ultimately solidified their decisions, leading to President Barack Obama on Wednesday securing enough votes to put the agreement in place over fierce and united Republican opposition. One after another, lawmakers pointed to the warnings from foreign leaders that their own sanctions against Iran would be lifted regardless of what the United States did.

But the president’s potentially legacy-defining victory – a highly partisan one in the end - was also the result of an aggressive, cooperative strategy between the White House and congressional Democrats to forcefully push back against Republican critics, whose allies had launched a determined, $20 million-plus campaign to kill the deal.

Overwhelmed by Republicans and conservatives in previous summers when political issues like the health care legislation were effectively put on trial, Democrats sought to make sure that momentum remained behind the president on the Iran agreement in both the Senate and the House.

Under the direction of Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic House leader, and a team of lieutenants, House Democrats orchestrated a daily rollout of endorsements of the Iran deal from a Capitol war room, tucked into Pelosi’s office just off the House chamber.

They parceled out their statements to make clear that House members were closing ranks behind the agreement and distributed letters of support from colleagues and respected outside experts to both wavering colleagues and the news media. They pushed back against reports they believed wrongly threatened the deal.

“There was a plan, and there continues to be a plan,” Pelosi said in an interview. “My goal was to have 100 by the end of the week, and we will exceed that.” She acknowledged that the memories of the previous summer health care fight were “useful because I could say to people that we have to be proactive because I know the other side will be.”

The administration, too, went all-out. At the White House, administration staff members set up their own West Wing war room and even created a separate Twitter account, @TheIranDeal, to make their case.

Cabinet members and other senior administration officials talked directly with more than 200 House members and senators. The president spoke personally to about 100 lawmakers, either individually or in small groups, and aides said he called 30 lawmakers during his August vacation on Martha’s Vineyard.

One senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss White House strategy said Energy Secretary Ernest J. Moniz, a nuclear physicist who helped negotiate the deal, was a “secret weapon” in selling it to lawmakers. Not only did he know the science, he could explain it clearly, persuasively and without the condescension some heard in Secretary of State John Kerry’s presentations.

Some of Kerry’s arguments, however, did resonate, especially when he quoted two prominent Israeli security experts who made favorable public comments about the Iran deal: Efraim Halevy, the former director of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, and Ami Ayalon, the former director of the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service.

Several lawmakers said the two Israelis provided a counterbalance to the forceful speech opposing the agreement that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made in Congress in March.

Indeed, Netanyahu and his allies may well have overplayed their hands. The campaign to kill the nuclear accord was not aimed at persuading Democrats so much as scaring them. In the end, that helped turn the debate into yet another partisan showdown without the gravity many feared it would attain.

Opponents of the agreement said they could not remember another recent policy battle where the White House and Pelosi were so driven. In tandem, they made the Iran vote a strong test of party loyalty.

Not all of the Democrats’ efforts helped their cause. Some lawmakers said they were put off by the president’s insistence that the only alternative to the Iran agreement would be war. And even some supporters of the deal said they were disturbed by the administration’s criticism of Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the No. 3 Democrat, who was one of just two in the party, along with Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, to publicly declare opposition to the agreement.

Although the announcement on Wednesday by Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, D-Md., that she would back the deal meant that a presidential veto could not be overridden in the Senate, critics of the agreement said they would continue to press lawmakers to oppose it. Ultimately, they said, Democrats would be held accountable for their votes.

“For pro-Israel activists, this is a once-in-a-generation vote,” said Patrick Dorton, a spokesman for Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran, which spent more than $20 million in a national media campaign against the deal.

Other opponents predicted that Democrats would rue their votes if Iran violated the agreement. One Republican official said the campaign against it was also hurt by the intense August media focus on Donald J. Trump’s dominance of the Republican presidential primary race and Hillary Rodham Clinton’s handling of State Department emails.

Some Democrats clearly agonized over the decision. But some who came out in support of the deal said the outside pressure was ineffective largely because the substance of the debate was too important and too complex.

“You felt the weight of it,” said Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa. “Millions of dollars in advertising going on. You just had to block it out.”

In an interview, Casey said the unwillingness of the other five powers to renegotiate was a major factor in his decision as well as the importance of keeping America’s allies unified.

“I would want to put us in a position,” he said, “where the same kind of unity on sanctions could be brought to bear on deterrence, which ultimately could be a military strike.”

In the end, one administration official said two things broke in Obama’s favor: an absence of outrage when lawmakers went back home for the summer recess, and a failure of the opponents to develop a credible alternative to the deal as it was negotiated in Vienna on July 14.

More important, the official said, an expected Republican alternative approach - an argument that Congress should simply ignore the accord and try to keep the existing interim accord in place - “never got beyond a few talking points.”

On Wednesday, with victory secured, Kerry still sought to reassure skeptics. “If Iran decides to break the agreement, it will regret breaking any promise it has made,” he said in an hourlong speech in Philadelphia.

The outcome left Democrats celebrating, assured of the president’s power to follow through on the deal - an outcome they said was crucial to upholding American’s international standing.

“Our ability to build coalitions, to lead, to have credibility when we enter into a negotiation was really on the line,” said Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., who organized the Iran deal strategy with Pelosi, with whom she consulted almost daily while lawmakers were scattered in their districts around the country. “To walk away now would diminish our ability to lead on future issues.”

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